


Amor volesti e speme

by Zdenka



Category: Don Carlos | Don Carlo - Verdi/du Locle/Méry
Genre: Carlos/Elisabeth, Loyalty, M/M, Rodrigo/Flanders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-19 22:15:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14882217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zdenka/pseuds/Zdenka
Summary: A confession and a moment of revelation. Carlos loves Élisabeth, Rodrigo loves Carlos, and Flanders is suffering.





	Amor volesti e speme

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "hope". Inspired by some recent conversations with [**raspberryhunter**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberryhunter) about this opera and this ship. An operatic and self-indulgent bit of writing, because I was having So Many Feelings about opera characters.

What Rodrigo saw in Flanders still haunts him. The king has given orders to stamp out heresy. Both soldier and priest obey without question. The river is red with blood; bodies lie unburied in the streets, and the faith that should bring comfort inflicts torment and fire. Rodrigo walks though a near-empty marketplace and hears desperate and suffering people curse his king’s name.

Rodrigo can no longer draw his sword for such a king. He leaves the victorious banners he has fought under for so long and takes the cause of Flanders into his heart.

Rodrigo’s hope is not in King Philip, suspicious and distant, but in the prince Don Carlos. Carlos who loves him as a friend, as a brother. When Rodrigo tells him of the cruelties being enacted in Flanders, the spark will leap from his heart into his prince’s, and Carlos’s heart too will burn with the same flame, longing to bring freedom and justice to this people.

Rodrigo speaks of Flanders, but he finds Carlos struggling under the weight of a terrible grief. “Open your heart to me,” he urges with deep affection, and Carlos does. His head resting against Rodrigo’s shoulder, his hands desperately gripping Rodrigo’s doublet, Carlos confesses in an agonized whisper: “I love—guiltily and madly—Élisabeth.”

Rodrigo pulls away, his head whirling. For Carlos to love his own stepmother, his father’s newly-married young queen, is a calamity. But more than that: Rodrigo was not expecting the sudden flash of disappointment, sharp as a sword-thrust. He did not realize until this moment, until the pause before Carlos could make himself speak, whose name he hoped Carlos would say.

It is not so difficult to master himself, to speak words of comfort. Carlos is so very dear to him. Whatever Carlos needs of him, Rodrigo will give, though it be his life.

Though both loves, his for Carlos and that of Carlos for Élisabeth, are sins in the eyes of men, Rodrigo cannot believe it to be sinful in the eyes of God, who awakens love and hope in men’s hearts. Not only Carlos but Rodrigo also will devote himself to a nobler love, the love for freedom, and keep the other love locked in silence. They kneel to swear brotherhood and consecrate themselves to this cause, Carlos’s hand warm against his own. Together, they will give back hope to Flanders.


End file.
